Santander to pay $550 million over predatory auto loans

Greedy subprime auto lending giant Santander is settling charges filed by 33 state Attorneys General and the District of Columbia, by paying $550 million.

The law enforcement officials charged Santander with engaging in predatory auto lending practices, including:

  • Approving auto loans Santander knew low-income car buyers could not possibly repay, resulting in an astronomical and devastating default rate of over 70%
  • Turning a blind eye to common scams that auto dealers engage in, such as falsifying loan applications to make it appear the used car buyers had far more income than they really had

“Santander profited by approving high-cost loans to disadvantaged auto buyers who were doomed from the start,” said California Attorney General Xavier Becerra in a statement.

As part of the settlement, Santander will provide over $99 million in relief to thousands of California consumers who Santander approved for its abusive high-cost loans.

Consumers with the lowest quality loans who had defaulted as of December 31, 2019, and have not had their cars repossessed, will be allowed to keep their car and have any deficiency balance on the loan (up to a total value of $45 million in deficiency waivers nationwide) waived.

Santander will also waive the deficiency balances for certain defaulted consumers across the country, with approximately $433 million in immediate forgiveness of loans still owned by Santander, and additional deficiency waivers of loans that Santander no longer owns but is required to attempt to buy back.

When consumers default on auto loans, lenders like Santander swoop in and repossess their vehicles,  often causing them to lose their jobs. When car buyers lose their only way to get to work, some become homeless. In states like California with huge areas that provide little access to public transportation, losing a vehicle can be a death sentence, particularly for people who are elderly or disabled, or live in rural areas or other parts of the state where they are unable to access health care without a car.

Did you have an auto loan with Santander?  Or was your vehicle repossessed by Santander?  We’re very interested in hearing from you. Please contact CARS, so we can listen to your story and help prevent more people from falling prey to scummy subprime auto lenders.

Read more:

Attorney General Becerra Announces Over $550 Million Settlement Against Nation’s Largest Subprime Auto Financing Company for Deceptive Auto Loan Practices

HUGELY popular, hilarious, and biting John Oliver video showing how unscrupulous auto dealers and lenders scam car buyers

California DMV punishes car buyers for others’ debts

Yes, it’s unfair. And yes it’s crazy.  Especially now, when California Governor Gavin Newsom and his administration are working hard to protect consumers from debt collectors during the pandemic, to mitigate the economic fallout.

But if you buy a used car in California, the California Department of Motor Vehicles can sock you with having to pay for past-due registration fees and penalties owed by the former owner.

Imagine the shock car buyers feel when they buy a used car, only to find out later that it comes with an unwanted accessory —  a boatload of bad debt.

This happens even to consumers who shop at auto dealerships. And there’s no limit on how much extra you can be charged. An overdue registration can cost you $300, $1000 or more in hidden, unexpected fees and penalties.

California law allows the DMV to impose a lien on the registration, until it is paid in full. It’s illegal to drive a car with expired license tags or registration. So if you refuse to pay, or can’t afford the unexpected expense, you can lose your car. The California Highway Patrol can pull you over, issue a “fix-it” ticket that you can’t afford to fix, or impound your car. If you aren’t the registered owner, you can’t get your car out of impound, even if you scrape together the cash to pay the hefty towing and impound fees.

Glenn Harris, a U.S. Army veteran and devoted family man with a wife and three children, testified before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary and described their ordeal:

“While I was driving to work recently, the CHP pulled me over. They noticed that I was driving with a temporary sticker that had expired, and my car was impounded. The CHP also said there was over a year of back fees owed to DMV that Express Auto Sales never paid.

They said we had to pay the DMV those extra fees, from before we even bought the car, before it could be registered in our names. We can’t afford to pay DMV those unexpected fees, that were not disclosed when we bought the car, on top of what we’re already paying the bank.

I can’t afford to pay the hefty impound fees, which are hundreds of dollars. I also can’t get the car out of impound because I am not the registered owner. Even if I got the car out of impound, I couldn’t afford to get it registered, so I may get pulled over and ticketed again.”

What will it take for the California DMV and lawmakers to end this grossly unfair practice, which can ruin the lives of innocent used car buyers who have done nothing wrong?  All they did was to buy a car from a licensed dealership.

How many Californians have already been made homeless because the DMV and law enforcement agencies seized their vehicles — often their only means of transportation to get to work or school, buy groceries and access medical care and other necessities of life?

Read more: California Vehicle Code Section 9562. (a) When a transferee or purchaser of a vehicle applies for transfer of registration, as provided in Section 5902, and it is determined by the department that registration penalties accrued prior to the purchase of the vehicle, and that the transferee or purchaser was not cognizant of the nonpayment of the fees for registration for the current or prior registration years, the department may [or may not] waive the registration penalties upon payment of the fees for registration due.

This means that the DMV might choose to waive the penalties, but not the past-due registration fees, even if the consumer can somehow convince the DMV that they are totally innocent and were unaware of the prior owner’s debt.

Auto dealerships re-open – but is shopping there safe?

Buying cars at auto dealerships has always been risky.  But especially now, when you may be exposed to Covid-19, the risks are even greater. Plus Covid-19 isn’t the only health and safety risk you face if you shop at a car dealership.

Many auto dealers don’t care enough about their customers’ safety to take the simple step of ensuring that FREE safety recall repairs are done to fix deadly safety recall defects.

Auto dealers neglect to get free repairs done to fix killer defects like:

  • bad brakes
  • steering wheels that literally come off in the driver’s hands
  • exploding Takata airbags that are like having a hand grenade go off in your face, causing blindness or bleeding to death
  • catching on fire
  • sticking accelerator pedals

So can you trust auto dealers to protect you from Coronavirus?  Obviously, the answer is NO.

Even huge auto dealership chains like CarMax and AutoNation sell hazardous vehicles with safety defects that have killed hundreds of people and seriously injured thousands more.

They spend millions in advertising to lure car buyers to their stores, trumpeting that vehicles they offer for sale must pass an “inspection.” They list over 100 components that are supposedly inspected. But don’t be fooled. They routinely fail to fix components with serious safety recall defects that are likely to kill you or someone you love.

CarMax is the largest retailer of used cars in the U.S.  They raked in over $18 billion in revenue last year, and are publicly traded on Wall Street.

CarMax used to hire employees and task them with delivering recalled cars to nearby new car dealerships for free repairs.  New car dealers liked to get the work. Auto manufacturers compensate their franchised dealers for performing safety recall repairs, so it’s a money-maker for them.

But then CarMax decided they could make more money by lowballing consumers who traded in recalled vehicles, then selling them rapid-fire for high retail as “CarMax Quality Certified” vehicles without waiting for the free repairs.

AutoNation is also publicly traded on Wall Street and boasts they are a Fortune 500 company with over $21 billion in revenue. Their largest investors include the trust controlled by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

At first, AutoNation announced they would guarantee that all their vehicles were recall-free.  But when Trump was elected, faced with competitive pressure from CarMax for investor dollars, they gave up and started selling dangerous recalled vehicles too.

The kicker: If you are injured or killed, or harm someone else because of an unrepaired safety recall defect, the dealers will blame YOU for buying a dangerous car from them.

Learn more:

CBS News:CarMax Accused of Selling Unsafe Vehicles

CBS This Morning: AutoNation Accused of Selling Recalled Cars

CARS tips: How to get a good deal on a nice, safe used car without the risks of buying from a dealer

Greedy car dealers snatch paycheck protection funds from small businesses

Profiles in GREED:

Multi-billion $$ mega-dealers AutoNation, Penske, and Group One Grab

At least $144 million from Paycheck Protection Plan

Trump Administration Aided Giant Corporations in Exploiting Loophole

AutoNation, the nation’s largest retailer of new vehicles, boasts that it’s a “Fortune 500” company with 26,000 employees and stores in over 300 locations in 18 states. In 2019, AutoNation raked in over $21 billion in revenue.

The corporate behemoth is also publicly traded on Wall Street. According to Barrons, “Bill Gates remains AutoNation’s largest shareholder. Through shares held by the [Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation] trust and 18.4 million AutoNation shares that Cascade owns, the co-founder of Microsoft (MSFT) still has total ownership of 19.3 AutoNation shares, a 21.6% stake.”

Penske Automotive, another giant auto dealership chain publicly traded on Wall Street, hauled in over $22.8 billion last year.

Group One Auto’s annual revenue was $12 billion.

So how did AutoNation, Penske, and Group One grab at least $144 million from the U.S. Treasury’s Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), while struggling businesses like restaurants, beauty parlors, nail salons, print shops, booksellers, self-employed people, and other small businesses tried in vain to access relief that was supposedly going to help them keep the wolves from their doors?

The PPP was supposed to be limited to businesses with fewer than 500 employees. But AutoNation, Penske, and Group One exploited a loophole provided by the Trump Administration’s Small Business Administration for mega-businesses with franchises in multiple locations, allowing them to each file for relief separately, even when they are all owned by the same conglomerate.

The National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) tutored its mega-dealer members on how to exploit the loophole, instructing them how to get around the 500-employee limit. The key to evading that limit was for the auto manufacturers to get a “franchise identifier code” from the Small Business Administration, so their dealerships could all masquerade as “small businesses” even when in reality they are enormous.

The NADA also engaged in various machinations to make sure all their dealer members, regardless their size, could apply for the taxpayer funds. The NADA brags that when the CARS Act was first passed, only about 25% of the U.S. auto manufacturers had obtained the coveted codes from the Small Business Administration. However, “in response to strong urging from NADA, all [the auto manufacturers] without codes quickly applied for them. And again in response to NADA’s advocacy, the SBA has now granted all of those applications.”

Basically, the NADA is trumpeting the fact that huge auto dealership chains exerted their influence with the Trump Administration, to get the SBA to expedite providing those handy “franchise identifier codes” in time to scarf up at least $144 million of taxpayer dollars before day care centers, ice cream parlors, pet sitting services, bakeries, or other mom and pop stores desperate for cash even had a chance.

The NADA’s tips are posted on their website, showing dealers how to game the system.

In fact, AutoNation may have snatched even more. According to the Washington Post, “Documents show the company may have received even more money, a total of $95 million, spread across dozens of locations, an amount that would be more than triple the amount any company is known to have received through the fund.” The article notes that “AutoNation disputes the $95 million figure.”

While AutoNation claims it has returned $77 million in taxpayer funds it scooped up from the PPP, without an independent audit of the program, they can hardly be believed. For weeks, while other corporations like Shake Shak and Ruth’s Christ SteakHouse, facing a firestorm of protests, surrendered their ill-gotten millions. Meanwhile, ignoring the plight of small businesses and laid-off workers, AutoNation callously clung to the vast sums they seized from taxpayers — until they were contacted by reporters from the Washington Post.

This is not the only way AutoNation is exploiting loopholes provided to auto dealers by the Trump Administration.

AutoNation is also jeopardizing public safety by deliberately selling its customers hazardous vehicles without repairing deadly safety recall defects first.

When Trump was elected, AutoNation’s CEO Mike Jackson announced AutoNation was reversing its policy of guaranteeing a recall-free car, and commenced selling dangerous deathtrap vehicles — including vehicles AutoNation knows cannot be repaired for prolonged periods, due to severe shortages of replacement parts.

Last fall, researchers for USPIRG Education Fund, the Consumers for Auto Reliability and Safety Foundation, and Frontier Group found that more than 1 in every 9 vehicles AutoNation offered for sale at 28 dealerships in 12 states, among 2,400 vehicles surveyed, had at least one unrepaired safety recall. Typical defects: catching on fire, faulty brakes, loss of steering, sticking accelerator pedals, and explosive Takata airbags that are ticking time bombs that spew shrapnel into drivers’ and passengers’ faces and necks, causing serious injuries including blindness and bleeding to death.

Read more:

Washington Post: “AutoNation, a Fortune 500 company worth billions, says it received nearly $80 million in SBA funds”

Automotive News: AutoNation retreats on used car recall policy

Unsafe Used Cars for Sale: Unrepaired recalled vehicles for sale at AutoNation dealerships